ANGLO-SAXON INDEX
at Trinity College, Cambridge

Images of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts
under construction

(5) The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, Winchester (1031)
London, British Library, MS. Stowe 944

A Liber Vitae ('Book of Life') is essentially a book in which a religious house would record the names of its members, friends, and associates, in confident expectation that by having the names entered in such a book, on earth, the same names would be inscribed in the celestial 'Book of Life' which was opened at the Day of Judgement (Rev. XX, 12, 15). There were, however, no fixed rules governing the composition of such books, and the few that survive are found to contain all manner of interesting texts.

The Liber Vitae of the New Minster can be shown to have been written by a monk and priest of the New Minster called Ælfsige, in the year 1031. It would have been conceived, however, by Ælfwine, formerly dean of the New Minster, who became abbot of the New Minster in succession to Brihtmær (died 25 December 1030). It is, in effect, a projection of the abbey's view of its own history and identity, made by Ælfwine at the outset of his abbacy; and it is at the same time an affirmation of the abbey's place at the centre of the Anglo-Danish regime. Abbot Ælfwine died on 24 November 1057.

The Liber Vitae begins with an image of the Golden Cross of the New Minster, Winchester, held in its place on the High Altar by King Cnut (1016-35), accompanied by his wife Queen Ælfgifu (Emma of Normandy), with Mary, Christ, and St Peter above, and various onlookers below.

• 1 (whole page), 2 (detail) (BL Stowe 944, fol. 6r)

The image of the Golden Cross is followed in the Liber Vitae by a composition spreading over the next opening (BL Stowe 944, fols. 6v-7r), representing the Last Judgement.

• left (fol. 6v); right (fol. 7r)

Among the most remarkable pages in the Liber Vitae are fols. 28v-29r, which record the names of the friends of the New Minster in the eleventh century. In the colour images of this opening, you can see (a) the continuation of the original layer of names on fol. 28v [extending to Sæfugel, in the main col. 2, line 5], as entered by the scribe Ælfsige in the year 1031, and (b) multiple layers of later additions on fol. 28v and fol. 29r. The additions are distinguishable from each other in a combination of ways: the script in which they are written; the ink in which they are written; and their placement on the page in relation to earlier entries. Sometimes just one name was added, sometimes several names were added as a group.

• fol. 28v (entries made in the 2nd quarter of the eleventh century, and later)
• fol. 29r (entries made in the 3rd quarter of the eleventh century, before and after the Norman Conquest, and later)

The present untidy appearance of the page is thus the end product of a highly complex process, representing the accumulation of names on many separate occasions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Yet the extraordinary sequence of entries on this opening, in so far as it can be reconstructed by the modern eye, provides a striking reflection of the changing course of events at Winchester from the closing years of the Anglo-Danish dynasty (1031-42), into the reigns of Edward the Confessor (1042-66) and Harold (1066), and onwards past the Norman Conquest into the Anglo-Norman period and beyond.